As you can see, my total workout duration this morning was 40 minutes. But my fast run interval which was 3 km at 4:25 m/km went wrong - putting me at walking pace. I was there, I definitely ran it - as you can see by my split times. Adding up the interval times makes almost 54 minutes.
Any help? Where does this phantom 14 minutes come from?
Been digging into this lately. The headline salary numbers don't tell the real story because cost of living varies wildly across the UK.
So I took median full-time salaries for 22 cities and divided by Numbeo's cost of living index (UK average = 100) to get a rough estimate of real purchasing power. Chart attached.
A few things stood out.
Aberdeen ranks #1 at £48,254 effective. Lowish cost of living and salaries are still solid thanks to oil and gas. London is dead last at £34,119 effective despite having the highest nominal salary in the country at £49,692. That's a 31% gap between what your payslip says and what your money actually does.
The expensive southern cities all get hammered. Cambridge, Oxford, Guildford and Brighton each lose 8-13% of their nominal salary to local prices. Meanwhile the cheaper cities (Dundee, Sheffield, Liverpool, Newcastle, Nottingham) all jump 11-18 places once you adjust.
Obviously the index doesn't capture everything. Salary distributions vary by industry, partner job markets matter, social ties matter even more, and a £55k London job isn't really the same job as a £42k Manchester one. London still has things nowhere else in the UK has.
But for anyone weighing up cities, the real gap is way smaller than the gross number suggests.
Does this match your experience? Anyone actually moved out of London and felt richer for it? Or moved into a "cheap" city and decided the lifestyle hit wasn't worth it?
